How to Store a ZENworks Image to a Local USB Hard Drive

I came up with this solution to the age old problem of not having ZENworks Imaging NIC drivers for new PCs and laptops. Instead of trying to compile new NIC drivers in the kernel and adding them to the Boot CD, I thought I’d come up with a more generic solution to image to a USB hardrive and wait for the official release of imaging drivers from Novell. This gives me a workaround which should last and not need constant updating.

I have used open source and Novell ZENworks software to achieve this. Things may be made easier if you use Partition Magic, but since not everybody has access to it, I didn’t use this in my solution.

Hope this helps some people get around their imaging woes.

Step 1: Prepare the USB Hard drive for use with ZENworks Imaging

The first step in this is to create an ext2fs partition on the external hard drive. This is to get over the 2GB file-size limitation Linux has on Fat 32 partitions. To do this I used the GParted utility in the System Rescue CD. An ISO and further instructions for use can be found here.

Boot to the CD.

Type startx to bring up the graphical interface.

Double-click on the highlighted icon on the right side of the screen to open the gparted partitioning tool.

(Click to enlarge)

You should create and format a partition at least as big as the image you want to create. I would suggest a minimum of 30Gb to give you plenty of space, the rest of the disk can be partitioned and formatted as NTFS/Fat32 and used with your Windows PC without affecting the ZENworks images.

Disclaimer: This content is not supported by Micro Focus. It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test it thoroughly before using it in a production environment.